Those pics don't show anything worthwhlie.Except for the headers.I can count 8 pins but am guessing it's 2 rows of 8 so 16 pins.There's no clue as to any chips on your pcb (or epoxy drops, meaning a chip glued forever to the pcb).Is there anything printed on your pcb ?Can you see any lines and a number of characters ?

It's quite likely you can use this display but you'll need to offer more info about it for any of us to be able to help you.

I'm sorry for not being clear.Take a good look at the display itself (the glass).You might see the separate pixels, and they could be grouped in 5 x 7 blocks or something alike.My question was how many of these blocks can you see.Are there 2 (or 4) lines of 16 blocks, (or 8, or 20) ?That was what i was asking for.

The new photo's show the epoxy "drop" (that black thing), meaning the chip is glued to the board.The "310597" is probably a production or design date of that board (may 31st 1997).L1 and L2 seem to be the connections for the lamps (they appear to be tubes) of the backlight for that display, and the red/black cable visible in the first set of pics would be to power these lamps.What do you mean with serial port adapter cable, and what board is that in the first pic of your last post?

All other text you copied from the board, are component numbers (R for resistor, C for capacitor).

OK the (plastic)glass you're holding, with the 40 rows and 143 columns, isn't the display pixels.It forms the diffusor together with the white sheet, meant to spread the backlight as evenly as possible.It's location would be beneath the green display glass.

You're holding the glass at its connector.You can see some dark and light alternating "ridges" in there.You will also have seen some gray (or whatever)/black rubberlike strip, clamped between the display glass and the pcb.Those strips have a more fine structure than the contacts of the pcb and the displayglass.

It is possible for you to not be able to see the pixels i was talking about earlier.

As there doesn't seem to be more identifying texts, it it unlikely to get this thing to work, i'm sorry.There's also no way to find out anything about the 16 pins of the connector, unless you'll be able to connect it and have the display working.Or if you can get a hold of the schematics of the donor device.Even then it will be a lot of work finding out how it does work, and to find out how to make it work with your Arduino.

well, first I cringed when I saw how far he went to disassemble the thing (I've done it myself but I have a little experience). but if he can follow the traces from the "serial" header to the first IC chip that it comes to, then we could determine if it is in fact a serial interface.

in reply #2, it appears as that board is the main control board and that there was a 16 pin header cable that went from that to the display board. and from what I can see on the display board is that it's "only" a display board, no controller (but I'm probably wrong). It would help if you copied down the numbers that appear on those ICs. I know you cant put logos here but if you could maybe say it's a stylized "M" for Motorola or "TI" for Texas Instruments and make each line separate. Like a chip I'm looking at now has:---------Atmel 63293C46PC---------

The board in reply 2 IS the display board, from the back.The controller is glued to that board.I'd be very surprised if there was to be an external controller, controlling a LCD (of this size) using no more than 16 pins.